CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Former President Trump returned to the campaign trail Wednesday, stopping in the critical swing state of North Carolina.
The Republican presidential nominee’s rally comes after President Biden’s blockbuster announcement on Sunday that he is suspending his re-election bid and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s candidate. This development has significantly altered the 2024 race.
Biden’s endorsement of Harris sparked a wave of support from Democratic governors, senators, House members, and other party leaders. By Monday night, Harris announced that she had secured her party’s nomination, having gained commitments from a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention.
Despite the change in the Democratic ticket, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley insists that the GOP’s strategy “does not change…at all.”
“We have been running our race, and we are going to continue to run our race,” Whatley, a former North Carolina GOP chair appointed by Trump as RNC chair in March after clinching the Republican nomination, emphasized in a Fox News interview.
Speaking at the rally site at Charlotte’s Bojangles Coliseum, Whatley highlighted that Trump and the RNC will continue to tie Harris to Biden’s policies on border security, fighting inflation, crime, and other key issues in the 2024 election.
“The Democrats not only have a messenger problem, they have a message problem. And Kamala Harris is doubling down on every single one of Joe Biden’s failed policies. It’s the Biden-Harris administration, the Biden-Harris campaign. And she is picking up that mantle,” he argued.
Whatley also stressed that Trump “has absolutely united the Republican Party in a way we haven’t had in generations. Now it’s time to unite the country around that vision of making America great again.”
Trump narrowly won North Carolina in his 2020 election defeat to Biden, and Democrats see an opportunity to flip the state this November. This visit is Trump’s second trip to North Carolina in two months. His last visit was over Memorial Day weekend when he watched NASCAR in Concord.
North Carolina is one of seven crucial battleground states that decided the 2020 contest and is likely to once again heavily influence the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.
“We continue to focus on the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — and the Sun Belt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, where the Vice President’s advantages with young voters, Black voters, and Latino voters will be important to our multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes,” a memo from the Harris campaign highlighted hours before Trump arrived in North Carolina.
Whatley said Trump needs to “continue his conversation with every American family, talking to every single American voter about his vision for a better America. He is going to be the one who is going to restore our southern border, restore our economy, restore our standing in the world, and really be the one around that vision.”
Expect Trump to also take aim at Harris, as he has intensified his verbal attacks on the vice president since Sunday on his Truth Social platform. Among other things, the former president called her “Dumb as a Rock” and “a totally failed and insignificant Vice President.”
Harris is also increasing her criticisms. Highlighting her law enforcement background, Harris pointed to her experience dealing with legal issues, underscoring Trump’s legal controversies.
“As many of you know, before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected as United States senator, I was the elected attorney general of California. Before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris said on Monday, repeating the line the next day.
“Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type,” she emphasized, referring to Trump’s multiple lawsuits and ongoing criminal cases.
